Attending the first ever CRUK London Brain Tumour Conference

Hello there! This week I won’t be filling you in on my latest experiment, because instead I spent three days at the first ever Cancer Research UK Brain Tumour Conference held in the Royal Society of Medicine in London! (Also the biggest conference I’ve been to so far).

The conference gathered over 30 great speakers from around the world to give talks on both adult and paediatric brain tumours, and that covered topics from innovating clinical trial design, to best benefit patients, to single cell -omics (i.e. studying all of the DNA, RNA, protein and more present in a cell at one time).

Actually, there were three fantastic speakers currently studying DIPG:

Michelle Monje who did fascinating work into the fact that glioma cells can generate electrical impulses and form synapses with normal brain cells

In addition to set talks the speakers took part in panel discussions that created the space for some quite heated debates ! (How can clinicians, pathologists and lab scientists best work together to provide tissue for laboratory research? We’re still sorting it out…)

Finally, attendees presented over 80 different posters, including one from our very own lab that provided an overview of our group’s research on DIPG! (You can read it here on Zenodo).